Duke University, which handed out Apple iPod digital music players to all incoming freshmen last fall, has altered its program, saying it will dole out iPods across the undergraduate student body, but only for classes in which the teacher has requested it.

The school expects to buy more than the 1,650 20-gigabyte iPods it bought this year, but spend less than the $500,000 it needed to start the program.

Duke says 600 freshmen signed up for classes that used the iPod as a learning tool — which means that more than 1,000 students did not.

The university says it found many educational uses for the device. Students used iPods to record lectures or audio files in music and language courses, and theater students created audio shows. Engineering students used them to study sound waves.

"Imagine that instead of taking copious notes, you could go back to any lecture later on in the semester and find exactly what the professor was talking about," Duke Provost Peter Lange says. "That's a clear educational use."

Other schools have followed in Duke's closely watched footsteps. Drexel University in Philadelphia will give iPods to freshmen in its School of Education next year; Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Ga., is using it for two courses; and Stillman College of Tuscaloosa, Ala., is offering free iPods as an incentive for students to fill out financial aid and registration forms on time.

"I just used it to listen to music," says Duke freshman Daniel Riley, 18. The iPod wasn't required for his classes. "The idea of recording a lecture sounds good, but only if you have the time to go back and listen to it."

Public policy professor Kenneth Rogerson says he pushed to get iPods for his journalism class, for lessons on interviewing. "Students are comfortable with it," he says. "They use it without thinking."

Duke says it is exploring ways to expand the marriage of education and technology with devices that could incorporate video, digital imaging and wireless communications.

"Duke students, like those at other campuses, are always on the go, and we're interested in ways to maximize learning, even if they're walking across the quad or sitting in their room late at night," Duke Chief Information Officer Tracy Futhey says.